Tag Archive: John Hawks

By all accounts, I think we can say that this year’s event was a smashing success!

The panel discussion was absolutely fantastic: the blog questions were stimulating and the audience questions were excellent as well. We had well over 200 attendees, many of them students. Honestly, with how dynamic the discussion was, we could have gone on for another hour. Our sincere thanks to the panelists, Drs. Baker, Nelson, and Jackson, and to the moderator, Dr. Cheryl Logan. They really made the discussion. It was clear from the audience’s questions that many people have a personal investment in the panel’s discussion, focusing as it did on issues of ancestry and how genetic information is used to contruct identity.

The turnout for Dr. Hawks’s keynote address was amazing: there must have been over 300 people! Dr. Hawks gave a wonderful presentation on Neandertals and, yes, many modern humans DO have Neandertal genes! Thanks to Dr. Hawks for joining us.

Check back soon, as we will be posting the video of the panel discussion and the keynote address on the blog.

We’d like to keep the conversation going, so please post your comments on this year’s event here…

So, here we are! We hope you’ll be able to join us for our event today (see details in the previous post). We’d like to thank all those who have submitted questions to our participants via the blog: there are some really interesting ones, and many of them will be addressed today. In fact, our participants will be meeting for lunch today to go over your questions, talk about them, and select several to be answered in the panel discussion.

The event is upon us! So, here is the schedule of events for tomorrow (Wednesday, March 23rd; a map of UNCG’s campus is available here):

1. 3-5pm EUC Auditorium: panel discussion featuring Dr. Alondra Nelson (Columbia University; see her bio here, and check out this post and this post), Dr. Lee Baker (Duke University; see his bio here and this post), and Dr. Fatimah Jackson (UNC-Chapel Hill; see her bio here). Each participant will be asked to speak for 10 minutes about how they see their research intersecting with this year’s theme (“Our genetic past and genomic future”), and then a roundtable discussion and audience questions will follow (moderated by Dr. Cheryl Logan, UNCG; see her bio here). Much of the roundtable will focus on questions submitted beforehand via this blog (see below).

2. 5-630pm EUC Kirkland Room: a reception will follow after the panel discussion. Refreshments will be provided (it’ll be a great spread, trust us…). This will serve as an “open house” of sorts, allowing the participants to interact directly with the student body and the general public. Students from UNCG’s Student Anthropological Society (SAS) will be available to direct people from the panel discussion to the reception.

3. 7-9pm Meade Auditorium (Sullivan Science Building 101): keynote address by Dr. John Hawks (University of Wisconsin-Madison; see his bio here and check out his weblog here). The title is “Neandertime: Deciphering the Secrets of Ancient Genomes”. The talk will consider the state-of-the-art in Neandertal genomics; it should be fantastic. Q & A will follow the talk.

Some general notes:

Given the late afternoon time of the panel discussion, we understand that people may not be able to show up right at three or stay until the end. We encourage people to show up at any time and listen to what our panel has to say.

Microphone stands will be available for the audience to ask questions at our panel and after the keynote address. However, you are also encouraged to submit questions beforehand to our participants. You can do so here. Keep in mind that you don’t have to attend to submit a question; we’ll be recording the entire event and will post the file on the blog afterwards…so, you will still be able to hear and see your question being addressed!

Our keynote speaker John Hawks posted on his blog yesterday about his keynote address this Wednesday. It should be really, really great. From his blog:

I’ve got to tell you, the talk I’m giving about Neandertal genetics is the very best I’ve ever prepared. I don’t say this kind of thing lightly, but if you’re in the area and care about Neandertals, this is as good as it gets. We are discovering new stuff every day, the pace of discovery right now is running way ahead of the pace of publication.

So, if you were thinking about attending, then this should give you good reason to definitely come!

The FDA held a meeting on March 8th and 9th about direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing. According to the FDA’s executive summary, DTC is:

…clinical genetic tests that are marketed directly to consumers (DTC clinical genetic tests), where a consumer can order tests and receive test results without the involvement of a clinician.

As Dan Vorhaus of the Genomics Law Report describes it, the main issue of the meeting was to decide how (and if) the FDA will regulate DTC genetic tests. There were really two perspectives:

1. Those who oppose DTC genetic testing worry that incorrect or misinterpreted tests could produce harmful outcomes, and they even questioned whether anything of value is actually gained from the tests in the first place.

2. Those who support DTC genetic testing argue that the information empowered patients to explore their “genetic selves” without any ill effects.

The meeting will sum up with recommendations for the FDA from the Molecular and Clinical Genetics Panel (MCGP), which is an FDA committee that “reviews and evaluates data concerning the safety and effectiveness of marketed and investigational in vitro devices for use in clinical laboratory medicine including clinical and molecular genetics and makes appropriate recommendations to the Commissioner of Food and Drugs.” Vorhaus suspects that the MCGP will recommend:

that clinical (as defined by the FDA, which is itself a separate issue) direct-to-consumer genetic testing, when offered without a requirement that a clinician participate in the ordering, receipt and interpretation of the test, be removed from the marketplace. At least for the time being.

Our keynote speaker, John Hawks, blogs about this issue and considers himself a “genetic libertarian.” He describes his position:

I believe that I have a fundamental right to my own biological information. What I mean is that, if anybody has biological information about me, I should be able to access and use it. Additionally, I think it is immoral for anyone to charge me excessive rates to access my own information. So that’s where I’m coming from. I’m a genetic libertarian.

See our keynote speaker Dr. John Hawks talking about rapid genetic evolution among modern humans (“Rapid evolution: Can mutations explore historic events?”) at the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

Check out Dr. Hawks (our keynote speaker) and Dr. Kate Clancy on Bloggingheads.tv. Although not directly related to our event’s theme, they do have interesting discussions on fertility in Poland and the challenges facing women in science.

Well, according to Ernst Mayr’s Biological Species Concept, which holds that species are “groups of actually or potentially interbreeding natural populations, which are reproductively isolated from other such groups,” the newest genetic data (see a previous post on this blog) suggest that perhaps they should be considered the same species. A nice summary of the debate is provided by Ann Gibbons in Science. While some paleoanthropologists (including our keynote speaker John Hawks, who is quoted in the piece; check out his blog post on the subject) consider Neandertals and modern humans to be the same species, others maintain that the two are distinct species because the anatomical, developmental, and behavioral differences between Neandertals and modern humans are much greater than what we see among any modern population.

Check out Gibbons’s piece and tell us what you think. Are we the same species or not (remember, it also depends on what species definition you decide to use)?

It is likely that Dr. Hawks will be addressing some of these issues in his keynote lecture (we now have a title for the talk: “Neandertime: Deciphering the Secrets of Ancient Genomes.”)

Please use the following form to submit your questions for our Harriet-Elliott participants. We will collect these before the event, present them to our participants, and select a group of questions that our participants will answer during the event.